“Two bedrooms,” I reply carelessly. “One for me, one for Noah.”
“Ah.”
“Lots of space.”
“Ah.” His eyes are locked onto mine with a promise of more, and I feel an involuntary shiver. Not that we can run upstairs and rip our clothes off straightaway. There is the small matter of my seven-year-old son sitting next to me.
“Shall we … eat?” I suggest.
“Yes!” Noah, finishing his ice-cream sundae, tunes in to the conversation with precision accuracy. “I want a burger and chips!”
An hour later, between the three of us, we’ve eaten one club sandwich, one burger, one bowl of normal fries, one bowl of sweet-potato fries, one platter of shrimp tempura, three chocolate brownies, and a basketful of bread. Beside me, Noah is half asleep on the banquette seat. He’s had a riotous time, darting around the bar, making friends with all the Bulgarian prostitutes, scoring Cokes and packets of crisps and even some Bulgarian money, which, to his dismay, I made him give straight back.
Now a six-piece band is playing and everyone is listening, and the lights are even dimmer than before, and I’m feeling fairly blissful. I’ve mellowed after my three glasses of wine. Lorcan’s hand keeps brushing against mine. We have an entire empty, delicious night ahead of us. I reach over to take the last sweet-potato chip from the bowl and glimpse Noah’s precious airline wallet on the seat next to him. It’s stuffed with what look like credit cards. Where on earth did he get those?
“Noah?” I nudge him awake. “Sweetheart, what have you got in your wallet?”
“Credit cards,” he says sleepily. “I found them.”
“You found credit cards?” My blood freezes. Oh God. Has he stolen someone’s credit cards? I grab the wallet and pull out the cards in consternation. But they’re not credit cards after all. They’re—
“Room keys!” says Lorcan, as I pull out about seven at once. The entire wallet is stuffed with electronic room keys. He must have about twenty of them.
“Noah!” I shake him awake again. “Darling, where did you get these from?”
“I told you, I found them,” he says resentfully. “People put them down on tables and things. I wanted some credit cards for my wallet.…” His eyes are already closing again.
I look up at Lorcan, my hands full of room keys splayed out like playing cards.
“What do I do? I’ll have to give them back.”
“They all look the same,” observes Lorcan, and gives a snort of laughter. “Good luck with that.”
“Don’t laugh! It’s not funny! There’ll be a riot when everyone finds out they’re locked out of their rooms.…” I look again at the electronic cards and suddenly snuffle with laughter myself.
“Just put them back,” says Lorcan decisively.
“But where?” I look around the tables of smartly dressed beautiful people, all enjoying the band, oblivious to my agitation. “I don’t know whose key is whose, and I can’t find out without going to the front desk.”
“Here’s the plan,” says Lorcan decisively. “We’ll scatter them around the room like Easter eggs. Everyone’s watching the band. No one’ll notice.”
“But how will we know whose key is whose? They’re identical!”
“We’ll guess. We’ll use our psychic powers. I’ll take half,” he adds, and starts grabbing key cards out of the wallet.
Slowly, cautiously, we get to our feet. The lights are dim and the band is playing a Coldplay song, and no one turns a hair. Lorcan walks authoritatively toward the bar, leans slightly to his left, and deposits a key card on a bar table.
“Sorry,” I hear him say charmingly. “Lost my balance.”
Following his lead, I approach another group, pretend to look at a light fitting, and drop three cards down onto the mirrored surface of the table. The sound of them landing is covered by the band, and no one even notices.
Lorcan is planting cards on the main long bar, moving along quickly, deftly reaching between bar stools and behind backs.
“You dropped this, I think?” he says, as a girl turns a questioning face to him.
“Oh, thank you!” She takes the card from him, and my insides curdle. I am half appalled and half delighted at what feels like the most massive prank. There’s no way that’s the key to her room. There are going to be some very angry guests later on.…
Now Lorcan is up near the stage, leaning right over a blond lady and blatantly flipping a key card onto her table. He meets my eye and winks at me, and I want to laugh. I get rid of my remaining cards as quickly as I can and hurry back to Noah, who is now fully asleep. I summon a waiter and quickly scribble a signature on our bill, then hoist Noah into my arms and wait for Lorcan to join us.
